Hoort gets high marks with a couple of sour notes

Edward Miller

Thursday

Nov 22, 2018 at 8:06 AMNov 22, 2018 at 8:06 AM

WELLFLEET — The select board gave Town Administrator Dan Hoort mostly high marks during his annual performance review last week, but one comment from Selectman Jerry Houk — that he had heard “complaints” about the town administrator taking too much time off — clearly struck Hoort as unfair. Over the weekend he emailed a vigorous defense of his work habits to the board.

Hoort is in the last year of his three-year contract, which runs through June 30, 2019. He told the Banner on Friday that he is hoping to continue in his job.

Each of the five select board members rated Hoort’s performance on a scale of 1 to 4 in a series of categories including financial management, organizational leadership, oversight and coordination of town programs, personnel management and relations with the public and other town officials.

“Mr. Hoort scored very well,” said Chair Janet Reinhart at the board’s Nov. 13 meeting. “All of the average scores were well above three and a half, if not close to four.”

Reinhart praised Hoort as a “strong strategic thinker,” adding, “We all know you have too much going on.”

When Reinhart invited the other board members to add their own comments, Houk said, “I think you do overall a good job, but there have been complaints. I don’t think you get out enough. I know you haven’t been down to the marina to really talk to the harbormaster. I think you need to go up to the DPW, to the Senior Center. The other thing that I’ve gotten from some of the employees is that you really haven’t had a staff meeting since you’ve been here — one time, I think. I’ve had complaints, too, that during the summer you seem to take a lot of Fridays or Mondays off. I know you go home and you do work from home. But we’re paying you to be here and not home.”

Houk did not specify who made the complaints.

At the meeting, Hoort acknowledged not getting out and about enough in town. “That’s one of my criticisms of myself,” he said.

But in his subsequent email to the select board he wrote that, since taking the job, he has not taken a vacation of even one week’s length. “I prefer to take a day or two in combination with a weekend and make it a long weekend where I can relax and recover from the week,” he wrote. “Since mid-June I have taken nine vacation days on a Friday or a Monday. A staff member or two may talk about my not being in the office when in fact I’m taking a vacation day to which I’m entitled.”

In response to Houk’s comment about not paying Hoort to work at home, he noted that his contract “specifically authorizes me to take off time to compensate for night meetings and weekend functions,” which are numerous. Taking Fridays off and doing some work from home on those days, Hoort wrote, “helps me keep my sanity.” Hoort lives in Provincetown.

“I’m entitled to take the time off, but more important to me is that the work gets done,” he stated. “I take my job very seriously and I take my responsibilities very seriously. I wanted to make sure you knew that.”

As for Houk’s comment on the lack of staff meetings, Hoort told the Banner, “I’m not a big fan of staff meetings. I do like to go to department meetings, talking about things that are directly related to the people sitting around the table.”

He admitted that “I need to do a better job of communicating” to the selectmen about taking days off. “If I take a vacation, I come back and I’m buried,” he said. “I’ve never really explained that to them.”

Overall, though, Hoort said, “I was pleased by the review, and humbled by their comments. It’s an ongoing thing to establish good working relationships.”